For Which I Pray

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,,

"When God is trying to punish you
He answers your prayers."

-- various attributions

Today Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko will shake up his Cabinet for the second time since its inauguration nine months ago. A cursory, dismissive review of the reshuffle would attribute the need for a second housecleaning in a short span of time in office as a sign of Noda's political weakness, a move forced upon him by the demands of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito after he failed, in two rounds of talks with Ozawa Ichiro, to win Ozawa's support for the government's primary goal of passing the legislation necessary to raise consumption tax to 10%.

A cursory review would, as is its wont, be oversimplifying matters.

The meetings with Ozawa last Wednesday and yesterday were never as the news media wanted them to be: for Ozawa to either fall on bended knees before Noda or for Ozawa to come roaring out, announcing that he and his followers were leaving the Democratic Party of Japan. Instead, both men walked out of the meetings with their dignities and the party intact. The most anti-DPJ media outlets called the meetings failures (E) while those with cooler heads merely noted that the two men argued past one another as if on parallel tracks (heikosen).

Both men, especially Ozawa, were very careful in their presentation of what went on at the meetings. Ozawa indeed did the unthinkable last Wednesday, appearing in a mainstream media interview, live, on set during what is the most important, if not most watched newscast: NHK's 9 pm news. Neither on that show nor yesterday did he ever say he would vote against the legislation, if and when it came up for a vote -- only that he was opposed to it. What he and his closest followers would do when push comes to shove has been left hanging up in the air.

With the talks ending inconclusively, Noda has moved on to answer the demands of the opposition, the first of which is the replacement of the Defense Minister Tanaka Naoki and Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Maeda Takeshi, both of whom the House of Councillors censured on April 20. However, according to media reports, Noda is going to go well beyond what the opposition has demanded in the reshuffle, sweeping out of his Cabinet three problematic officials: Minister of Justice Ogawa Toshio, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Kano Michihiko and MAFF Senior Vice Minister Tsutsui Nobutaka.

Ogawa probably did not draw a target on his back for checking up on horse racing reports during Question Time (E). If anything Ogawa's weakness for the horses made him seem more human and approachable.

Ogawa is being shown the door for pulling a Yanagida Minoru (E). In a speech on May 11 at his alma mater Rikkyo University, Ogawa joked that when he was running for office, he had listed on his campaign posters that he had been a judge. "However," he explained, "The three years I spent working as a judge were pretty boring for me, so even though it was not to my advantage, I asked my staff to strip the title from my posters." (J)

It is just amazing what Ministers of Justice will say about their jobs to accommodating audiences whom they feel they need to amuse.

As for Kano and Tsutsui, they are the dead, red meat that has to be thrown to the opposition to prevent questions about the Li Chunguang Affair (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4) from devouring the remainder of the regular Diet session, which has an already hopelessly behind schedule due to the LDP's boycott of House of Councillors' sessions, leaving the Diet only two weeks (in theory) to blow through 60 heretofore unexamined bills. (E)

The upshot is that with the delivery of the heads of Tanaka and Maeda and the dismissal of Kano -- who was going to be a pain the posterior about the Trans Pacific Partnership, another major goal of the Noda government -- and Tsutsui, and with Ozawa's failure to support the consumption tax rise, the onus is now on the LDP, whose campaign manifesto contains a pledge to raise the consumption tax to 10%, to either support the bills or betray themselves.

Of the two, I would prefer the prime minister's position.

The League Of Incurious Stenographers

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Journalism is a profession, or at least it should be.

This Kyodo news report declares it to be a profession in peril:

Experts scoff at allegations of spying by diplomat Li
Kyodo

BEIJING/TOKYO — Some people in diplomatic and intelligence circles are skeptical about the spying allegations leveled against Li Chunguang, a diplomat at the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo who fled Japan last month after rejecting a request to be questioned by the Japanese police.

The Metropolitan Police Department's Public Security Bureau handed over information on Li, a 45-year-old first secretary at the Chinese Embassy, to prosecutors for potential prosecution action on May 31, on suspicion that Li used a false identity to renew his alien registration card.

The prosecutors appear likely to decide against indictment in the absence of the diplomat, who left on May 23.

"Although we did need to question him, if we could (the request was turned down), so we decided to send the case to prosecutors after nearly completing the investigation," a bureau official said.

Initially, police and some media outlets speculated that Li was involved in espionage. A newspaper said the first secretary is suspected of having obtained information from classified documents leaked from the farm ministry about a project to promote exports of Japanese produce to China.

The public security investigation bureau had been following Li, who is thought to have belonged to an intelligence unit within the People's Liberation Army, since he was posted to Japan in July 2007 as an economic affairs officer.

On May 31, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Michihiko Kano said he met the diplomat five times and denied that he or any other farm ministry officials passed classified documents to him.

According to a friend of Li, since returning to Beijing the former first secretary has been fuming about media reports about his alleged spying and reportedly said he never wants to visit Japan again.

The Chinese Embassy in Tokyo said he left Japan because his stint abroad was up. Li's departure in late May came after nearly five years in Japan — which is typical for many embassy officials.

Ahead of that, Li is also said to have consulted with friends about job opportunities after returning from Japan and inquiring about whether there were any good posts with a government organization relating to economic affairs.

Japan's police suspect he renewed his alien card to open many bank accounts to receive "advisory" fees from Japanese firms.

However, people in diplomatic and intelligence circles say a professional spy typically pays for classified information.

"The Metropolitan Police Department tracked him for five years and came up only with the problem with an alien registration card," said an intelligence expert who worked in China. "What's more, evidence shows the first secretary has only received payments when he should have been paying for information."

"It's more than obvious that a fraudulent renewal of an alien registration card will easily be spotted if one does it using his real name," the expert added. "A pro would never do such a thing."

After the latest case, experts say Japan is "too open" when it comes to data held by the government, while China keeps a strict watch via law-enforcement and other government units.

In May 2009, a ranking official of China's Xinhua news agency was sentenced to 18 years in prison for spying and other charges.

The ruling said he was punished for receiving around 207,000 yuan, which was worth around ¥2.5 million at current exchange rates, in cash from then Japanese Ambassador Yuji Miyamoto in return for secret data on North Korea and other matters.

But the "secret" information was said to be about matters already in the public domain.

Unlike China, where even trivial data may be classified, Japan doesn't have strict laws on guarding confidential information. As a result, Chinese spies may view Japan as a sort of heaven where classified data can be obtained legally.

On Li's case, a Japanese police official suggested that the attempt to call him in for questioning was intended to remove someone they suspected of spying. "If we had let him go home without taking any action, he could come back again as a diplomat."

Atsuyuki Sassa, who was head of foreign affairs at the National Police Agency, said, "Requesting his appearance for questioning was perhaps the best they could do, but it certainly had the effect of checking (Chinese moves)."

(Link)*

How quickly we move from "experts" to "some people." The only "expert" named who supports the thesis is an anonymous individual whom we are told has expertise in China.

As for the article itself, it begins in one place, decides to tackle the subject, misses, lolls about regaling us with tales of yesteryear and ends up quoting a single security expert, Sassa Atsuyuki, whose thesis is the exact opposite of the one the article attempts to promote.

"So journalists on deadline on the weekend write crap. So what?"

Wrong! This is what Kyodo is reduced to releasing now that police informants, realizing what a complete disaster the Li case has become, are now either shutting their mouths or pointing reporters into speculating that perhaps Li was not a spy, after all.

Not that the screw up has been all bad for the NPA. As Shingetsu News notes, the Li case is not being used as a lever to pry an espionage bill out of the Diet -- which would be a neat way to play both sides of an issue ("He's a spy; we need a law. He's not a spy; we still need a law!") if the public is lulled into paying no further attention to the machinations of the security apparat.

That both the Japanese and the Chinese government are lying about the Li case is obvious.

Can you imagine how ticked off the career diplomats of the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs would be if the story the Chinese government has been shopping around turned out to be true, that the #4 position in the embassy -- in the Economics Division, no less, where the misplacing of a single comma in a bilateral agreement could cost the country billions of yuan -- was handed off to some academic wanderer with loads of Japan experience?

Something big and bad happened here. Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Kano Michihiko, who gave crucial support to Prime Minister Noda in August of last year when Noda was running for the position of party president, will today lose his ministerial post, the prize which he had extorted from Noda in return for his support, because of what may have been the most innocent and perfunctory of contacts with Li.

The government is trying to bury this and bury this fast.

-----------------------------------------------
* I generally forego quoting whole articles. However, this one is so bad it is likely to disappear quickly into the ether, after having emerged from the muck.

I Spy With My Little Eye

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,,

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong.

- H. L. Mencken (1917)

The Shingetsu News Agency has just put up a story, "Japan’s “Spy” Case That Probably Isn’t." The article very kindly notes my skepticism regarding the narrative spewed out by Channel Sakura, the Yomiuri Shimbun and others -- that First Secretary of the Embassy of China Li Chunguang (now that the National Police Agency has sent papers to the Embassy, the mainstream news media is finally showing his image and reporting his name) used (a) bank account(s) opened under false premises to receive funds from Japanese companies. These funds were then used to pay for spying activities.

The SNA report speculates that a far more probable explanation for the illegal bank account(s) was Li's seeking to build up a little nest egg outside the knowledge of his superiors and outside China.

Correspondence with two veteran Asia watchers, one a Japan specialist, the other a businessman with decades of experience in China, finds them in agreement with the SNA: this is a story about an individual's greed.

I wish I could believe the simple answer. Occam's Razor suggests I should.

However, I cannot.

There are loose ends that make my head ache:

- Li purportedly could open bank accounts in Japan using an alien registration card (gaikokujin toroku shomeisho) which had been issued by a local municipality -- no reports as to which one (See second update below - Ed.) -- after he presented his old Tokyo University ID card.

Can one actually do this? In my experience, unless one can produce a passport, one which the staff members at the ward/town office will always politely ask whether or not they might photocopy, you had might as well not show up at all.

So Li showed up at the ward/town office with his expired Todai ID and a fake passport. The simplest answer as to how he procured this fake passport was from Chinese intelligence. However, it is not the only way he could have procured a faked passport.

Li, for attempting this runaround, must have nerves of steel: so many things could have gone wrong, exposing him. Except, of course, if higher authorities from the central government had forewarned the ward/town office of Li's request for an alien registration card, resulting in Li's documents not being examined with the ward/town's usual level of diligence.

- News reports have Li being under surveillance since 2007. The NPA knows/learns that he is a graduate of the People's Liberation Army language training program and a member of the PLA General Staff. It follows him around for five years (a long span of time for a diplomat to remain at a post - a flashing red light) as he visits and interacts with members of the Diet, the bureaucracy and the business community.

He is likely the highest-level asset China has in Tokyo. He has been followed for half a decade...and the NPA burns him over illegally obtained bank accounts?

Non, non, non, non, non...je suis un con, mais je ne suis pas con au point de croire cela...

We must assume that NPA counterintelligence would never permit the exposure of a compromised asset of Li's stature.

So the most plausible scenario is that someone inside the NPA made a huge mistake, such as:

- NPA counterintelligence uses the illegal bank accounts in order to threaten Li in what is a clumsy attempt to turn Li into a double agent. Knowing his cover blown and his illegal accounts compromised, Li goes back to his superiors with the bad news. Having failed in its amateurish attempt to blackmail Li into betraying his country, the NPA places a formal request with the Embassy to question Li. His usefulness in Tokyo now zero, Li is whisked back to China.

- A misguided patriot inside the financial crimes division, learning that a Chinese diplomat is conducting business inside Japan using false bank accounts and furious that his division does nothing to stop such criminal behavior, leaks information on Li to the right wing press -- in the same way Isshiki Masaharu leaked the video of a Chinese fishing vessel colliding with two Japan Coast Guard vessels in November 2010. The NPA, realizing that Li's cover is about to be irretrievably blown, resigns itself into allowing the financial crimes division to pursue Li through formal procedures.

Far-fetched?

...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth...

- Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four (1890)

Later - In my first post on the Li Chunguang Affair, I identified Akihiko Tanaka as the Vice President of Tokyo University. Reader RS reminds me that since April 1, Tanaka has been the president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) - Link.

Later still - For the record, the NPA's sending of papers to Li via the Embassy of China makes sense only as a courtesy to the news media, allowing them to start showing Li's face and referring to him by name. As a holder of diplomatic passport, Li had full immunity from arrest for his violations of the Alien Registration Act.

Also for the record, Li filed his false application for an alien registration card and received it in Katsushika City (Katsushika-ku).

The Bloodletting Begins - China, Spying and Phytosanitary Restrictions

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The dirty game of leaking from the Li Chunguang case has begun. Unsurprisingly, the Yomiuri Shimbun is at the forefront at publishing the leaked information, targeting members of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan with missiles of filled with innuendo and non-sequiturs.

Agriculture leak to be probed / Ministry team to investigate Chinese diplomat's link to secret documents

The agriculture ministry will set up an investigation team within the ministry to investigate the alleged leaking of classified documents, following Wednesday's report by The Yomiuri Shimbun that a Chinese diplomat may be responsible for the security breach.

Speaking to reporters at the ministry on Wednesday, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Michihiko Kano said: "As long as such a report was made, I believe it's important to thoroughly investigate the case as a ministry. I told this to the team members."

The leaked documents are believed to contain information on a program for exporting agricultural products to China. The Yomiuri Shimbun reported the 45-year-old first secretary at the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo, who is suspected of espionage, was involved in the program organized by the Promotion Association of Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries & Foods Exporting to China, a Tokyo-based incorporated body.

The diplomat, who also is suspected of violating the Alien Registration Law, has already left Japan

Senior Vice Minister Tsukasa Iwamoto will lead the ministry's investigative team, whose members include several senior officials, such as Parliamentary Secretary Tetsuo Morimoto and a vice minister, Kano said

The ministry's other senior vice minister, Nobutaka Tsutsui, who led the program in question, was not included in the team

Asked about Tsutsui, Kano said, "I guess we'll have to ask him [about the leak]."

Read the full story (Link) though there is really not much of a story. A shipload of Japanese produce and fish destined for a special Japanese agricultural products promotion got held up at agricultural inspection by the Chinese government's failure to waive its usual phytosanitary restrictions. Li went to visit Vice-Minister Tsutsui, presumably to explain what was going on and/or offer an apology. The shipment eventually had to be destroyed.

End of story.

TV Asahi has a report out alleging that Li entertained members of the DPJ's agriculture tribe, MAFF elite bureaucrats and representatives of agricultural interests at restaurants and other venues (ANN News - J - time sensitive).

The Mainichi Shimbun's coverage of the story hones in on the opening of the bank accounts and the money allegedly transferred to those accounts (E). That the Mainichi acquired such detailed information as the exact amounts transferred to the accounts says very little that is admirable about the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's ability to protect information with possible vital national security implications.

As can be seen from the Yomiuri and Mainichi texts and the TV Asahi segment, the mainstream media is clinging with desperation to their at once inconsistent and overbearing applications of restrictions on revealing the identities and images of persons under investigation (Why the giant, floating blue ball, TV Asahi, on what seems to be footage from open government sources?) Internet news outlets, You Tube and the non-Japanese press are circulating reports featuring Li's name and image. The hopeless maintenance of a veil of secrecy makes the story seem more sinister, which may be good for ratings. However, the effort at concealment makes the mainstream press look like fools, in the same way their tentative coverage of the Olympus scandal did, after FACTA and the foreign press had already broken the case wide open.

Later - Will opposition parties go bananas about Li Chunguang's activities, the extent to which the government's had knowledge of them, the possibility of security breaches and the compromising of appointed officials and bureaucrats, tying the Diet's schedule into knots, making it impossible for the Noda government to pass the legislation necessary for the implementation of its political program?

Let us say, to be brief, yes.

Later still - Li's purported efforts to influence opinions at MAFF and among legislators with strong ties to agriculture interests will mean that the MAFF will likely be off-limits to foreign entities trying to encourage the loosening of restrictions on agriculture trade and the ending of agriculture and fishery subsidies. This would indicate that Japanese participation in TPP negotiations are deader than Elvis, for the time being.

First Secretary of the Embassy of China, Economic Section -- Spy, Hustler Or A Combination Thereof?

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, This story makes no sense. (E)

If anyone never needed to open an illegal bank account, using a false foreign resident's card somehow received thanks to his old University of Tokyo ID, this in order to receive money transfers of consulting fees from Japanese companies, then First Secretary Li Chunguang of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China was that person.

Li was as well-connected as any Chinese could conceivably be, having studied both at the prestigious Matsushita Institute of Government and Management -- the finishing school of both Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko and Foreign Minister Gemba Koi'ichiro-- and at the University of Tokyo's Institute of Oriental Culture, presided over during the years Li was there by the extremely influential Tanaka Akihiko, now Todai's Vice President.

Li should have never been in need of money, at least not in performance of his duties. In addition to his diplomatic salary, he was secretly a member of the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army. With his fluent Japanese and his contacts in business, government and politics, it is inconceivable that China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chinese security agencies and/or the PLA would not have a limitless and quite legal ATM account for Li to draw upon to pay for information, when he needed to do so.

So I think Channel Sakura, which has an old Okazaki Institute (!) seminar video showing Li's face, name and affiliation (Your tube - J) and the major news outlets are mistaken in claiming that Li used the money he accepted as consulting fees for spying purposes. It just does not stand to reason that anyone in the Government of China would sign off on such clumsy method of buying information.

Then again, it is impossible to understand how someone as valuable as Li would ever stoop so low as to be shilling for what amounted to pocket change.

Like I said, this story makes no sense.

The only person who can explain it is Li, who made it out of the country on May 23, just ahead (?!?) of Japanese authorities ready to detain and expel him for violations of the Vienna Convention prohibiting serving diplomats from conducting business in the countries in which they do their service.

My guess is that no one will be seeing much of the handsome and worldly Mr. Li for quite some time.

If ever.